While the Carlos Correa negotiations remain in a deadlock, the Blue Jays made (some) headlines yesterday by inking Brandon Belt to a one-year deal worth $9.6 million, per multiple sources. Belt, a longtime fixture of the Giants’ offense, is expected to play first base and serve as Toronto’s designated hitter. That means he’ll be sharing time with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as well as Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk, who’ll likely take turns DH’ing to minimize their grueling workload as catchers.

At first, that arrangement doesn’t make immediate sense. What Guerrero, Jansen, and Kirk share in common besides their hatred of incoming baseballs is right-handedness, and righty batters are usually worse against righty pitchers. You might have reasoned that the Jays recruited the lefty-hitting Belt to shore up this particular weakness. But so far in their careers, the aforementioned trio hasn’t shown much of a vulnerability against same-handed pitching. Check out these splits:

So why did the Jays go out of their way to sign Belt? Some potential answers: It’s good to have diversity in a lineup; the Jays needed hitting depth; and Belt, regardless of handedness, is an intriguing rebound candidate. But I have another theory! The main reason why same-handed pitcher-batter matchups tend to end in embarrassment for the batter is because breaking balls are good — almost too good, as the league-wide imbalance between pitchers and batters demonstrates. Or just ask Max Scherzer, who throws his slider exclusively against right-handed hitters and eats them alive. It’s getting more and more important that teams are able to weather such breaking ball barrages. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the Mariners were active. Most notably, they inked outfielder AJ Pollock to a one-year, $7 million contract, their largest guarantee of the offseason. Additionally, they swung their second trade with the Brewers this winter, acquiring reliever Justin Topa for fellow right-hander Joseph Hernandez.

While the M’s have been busy all offseason, highlighted by three significant trades prior to this one, no one move stands out as the “splash” fans may have been hoping for in order to build on the team’s drought-ending 2022 playoff run. Still, the club has added an estimated $23 million in payroll from a variety of sources, seeking to retool an already solid roster across multiple areas. Lately, left field and the bullpen have stood out as the largest holes, and Saturday’s two transactions move the Mariners closer to filling them.

Let’s start with left field and AJ Pollock. Last year, Mariners’ outfielders put up a 111 wRC+, which tied for fifth-best. But their overall performance was dragged down by a middling five Outs Above Average (OAA) mark, which placed them 11th in the majors. This winter, the M’s parted with Jesse Winker, their incumbent left fielder whose -10 OAA mark stood out as the sixth worst among all major league outfielders. Dealing him to the Brewers for Kolten Wong, Seattle also managed to shore up a second base need in the process — collectively, the M’s put up the majors’ third-worst WAR mark at the keystone last year — and the money just about evened out with the Brew Crew’s help. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Kansas City Royals.

Batters

Coming into the 2021 season, there were reasons to be optimistic about the future of Kansas City’s offense, with Bobby Witt Jr., MJ Melendez, Nick Pratto, and Vinnie Pasquantino. Three of these four played well in the majors, but only one — and probably the one the Royals were themselves least high on, Pasquantino — really wowed offensively. Witt was solid, but far from amazing, and Melendez’s bat was mainly good because he plays a position that he may not be playing for very long. I guess what it comes down to is a simple question: outside of Pasquantino, who do you feel better about now than a year ago? The problem with the Royals is that I’m hard-pressed to give many names in response to that question.

KC’s minor league hitters didn’t come roaring out of the gate, which makes the challenges steeper for the next front office/manager. It’d be easy if Melendez had pushed Salvador Perez to permanent DH status or if Pratto blew everyone away at first, but neither really happened, so decisions have to be made. Except for Michael A. Taylor, the legacy veterans are pretty much gone, and while Taylor is frequently named as a possible trade candidate, if he were a car, he’s in a situation similar to that of a 1999 Ford Taurus: you’ll probably find a new home for him, but not someone who is going to offer much in return.

Can Pratto hit at the major league level? After all, he didn’t really hit at the minor league level in 2022. Can Melendez play catcher successfully? Is Witt a shortstop? The Royals have to answer these questions, and if they don’t make great strides into doing that in 2023, the season is probably a failure overall. At least they’ve moved on from Ryan O’Hearn. They’ll need to; of hitters yet to make their major league debut, ZiPS only sees Maikel Garcia as having a strong chance at a 10-WAR career. Read the rest of this entry »

For some reason, a clip of Alex Rodriguez yielding shortstop to Cal Ripken Jr. in the latter’s final All-Star game just won’t stop popping up on my Twitter timeline. Maybe it’s because I seem to stop scrolling every time I see it, but regardless, it keeps making me think about the great shortstops who have gone from playing up the middle to patrolling the hot corner during the prime of their careers. Funny enough, Ripken wasn’t one of them. His switch came later in his career, but the guy who yielded to him transitioned after an MVP season. A-Rod moved over upon his trade to the New York Yankees, and the rest is history.

While Carlos Correa technically still doesn’t know where he’ll be playing baseball in 2023, assuming that he and the New York Mets work out a deal, it will involve him ceding his natural position to fellow island mate Francisco Lindor. Correa and Lindor don’t present a perfect parallel to A-Rod and Derek Jeter because the skill differential makes a little more sense this time around. But Correa has long been compared to Rodriguez when it comes to his physical stature, tenacity, and fervor for the game. Now Correa finds himself considering a switch similar to A-Rod’s despite very recently being considered one of the best defensive shortstops in the game. Luckily, in terms of his skill set, Correa is a near-perfect fit to immediately be an elite defender at the hot corner, much like A-Rod’s seamless transition. Before laying out the case defending that transition, let’s take a look at Correa’s fielding metrics over the years:

Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants started their week off by announcing a new free agent signing: right-handed pitcher (and sometime Elliott Smith look-alike) Luke Jackson. And for a career middle reliever, it’s a pretty big commitment: $3 million in 2023, $6.5 million in ’24, and a club option for ’25 that will cost $7 million if exercised, $2 million if not. That’s a total guarantee of $11.5 million over two years.

Jackson, 31, was originally a Texas Rangers draft pick, but spent the past six seasons with the Braves. He was last seen among the vaunted bullpen that helped carry Atlanta to the 2021 World Series title. Jackson tied with Will Smith for the most appearances by an Atlanta reliever (71) and had the lowest ERA on the staff (1.98). He made 11 more appearances in the playoffs. Nine of those were scoreless; the other two (four earned runs in 1/3 of an inning in Game 3 of the NLCS; two batters faced, two doubles in Game 6 of the NLCS) were very much not.

You might have clued in to the fact that Jackson hasn’t pitched in a meaningful game since the 2021 World Series, which was more than a year ago. If so, congratulations on remembering that it’s 2023 now — lots of people are still struggling with that. But yes, Jackson had Tommy John surgery in April of last year. Based on normal rehabilitation times, it wouldn’t be shocking to see him pitch for the Giants at some point in 2023, but it would constitute a minor medical miracle if he were able to return for Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I looked into how the predictions at FanGraphs, both crowdsourced and those produced by me, matched the contracts awarded to free agents this offseason. Today, I’d like to dive into a few cases where I made mistakes in individual player predictions, as well as a few I think I did well on. In each case, I’ll try to come up with some takeaways for predicting contracts in the future.

Jacob deGrom
My prediction: 3 years, $141 million
Crowd prediction: 3 years, $120 million
Actual contract: 5 years, $185 million

My lesson here: Don’t predict an unprecedented contract if you’re aiming for accuracy. It made sense to me that Jacob deGrom would sign a deal that outstripped any before him when it comes to average annual value. He’s the best pitcher in the game when healthy, and that was enough for me. Why wouldn’t he have the biggest contract?

That’s a silly way of thinking about it in retrospect. He merited a huge contract, and he got one, but why in the world would someone with his injury history want a short-term deal? In all honesty, it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. Predicting something outside of the ordinary is fine, but extraordinary predictions should require extraordinary confidence, not merely “I think this would be neat.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Roger Angell-identified way in which baseball is different from other sports, discuss the Mariners signing AJ Pollock and the Phillies trading for Gregory Soto, and respond to the Dodgers cutting ties with Trevor Bauer, MLB reinstating former Braves GM John Coppolella, and KBO ace An Woo-jin not being rostered on South Korea’s WBC squad, plus musings on the competitive advantage of preventing leaks and a Past Blast from 1953. Then (42:42) they talk to FanGraphs senior writer and ZiPS creator Dan Szymborski about the weakest projected positions on contending teams, along with detours into Shohei Ohtani’s WAR projection, whether salaries for starting pitchers have declined along with innings totals, the linear relationship between dollars and WAR, the deflation of center-field offense, the pace of free-agent signings, whether AI will be the downfall of humanity, and more, followed by a postscript with a few notes and updates.

Audio intro: Trampled By Turtles, “A Lifetime to Find”
Audio interstitial: Margo Price, “That’s How Rumors Get Started”
Audio outro: Jason Isbell, “If it Takes a Lifetime”

Link to Angell’s “On the Ball”
Link to MLBTR on Pollock
Link to Longenhagen on Soto
Link to Sands photo
Link to Dipoto on M’s spending
Link to Rosenthal on Bauer
Link to Nightengale on Bauer
Link to MLBTR on Coppolella
Link to An Woo-Jin article
Link to more on An Woo-Jin
Link to more on KBO bullying
Link to An Woo-Jin scouting report
Link to article on volleyball bullying
Link to Nightengale on the Braves
Link to 1953 story source
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter
Link to article on Rose’s bet
Link to zombie runner coinage
Link to Ben C. on FA movement
Link to Ben’s FA retrospective
Link to Dan’s ZiPS pieces
Link to FG depth charts
Link to best remaining FA
Link to Dodgers payroll post
Link to Rob on pitchers/payroll
Link to Dan on paying for wins
Link to Rob on CF offense
Link to Posnanski on chess bots
Link to Dan’s Gronk tweets
Link to Dan’s weapons tweet
Link to chatbots EW episode
Link to MLBTR on Hendriks
Link to MLB.com on Hendriks
Link to All-CarShield team
Link to EW on CarShield sponsors
Link to Andújar trade request
Link to tennis baseball video
Link to Colbert/Musial story

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A bat-first shortstop with some pop and a first name that some writers interpreted as a typographical error, Jhonny Peralta spent 15 seasons in the majors (2003-17) while helping all three franchises he played for — Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis — make the playoffs at least once. Though he struggled in his first exposure to the majors, he soon supplanted longtime fan favorite Omar Vizquel, impressing teammates and executives with his poise and establishing himself as part of a contending club’s youthful core.

Peralta made three All-Star teams, all in his late 20s and early 30s, though his career was tarnished due to a 50-game suspension for receiving performance-enhancing drugs from Biogenesis, the Miami-based anti-aging clinic whose most famous baseball client, Alex Rodriguez, received a full-season suspension. That Peralta was able to return to the Tigers in time to participate in their 2013 playoff run, and that he signed the biggest contract of his career shortly afterwards, caused controversy within the game and played a part in increasing PED penalties — which might be the most lasting part of his legacy. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency has come and gone this offseason. Earlier than we’re used to in recent years, we can look back on this year’s class and make some conclusions. To some extent, that’s a lot of our offseason coverage; what are ZiPS projections and positional power rankings, after all, if not catalogs of how teams have changed their fortunes in the offseason? Today and tomorrow, I thought I’d do something slightly more navel-gazey, and perhaps slightly more useful in the long run, by looking back at my contract predictions to see what went right and what went wrong.

First things first: let’s take an accounting of both the crowd’s and my predictions. I took the contracts signed by each of the top 50 players in free agency. A few clarifying remarks: I removed players who accepted a qualifying offer, as both the crowd and I made our predictions before qualifying offers were extended. I considered only guaranteed years, ignoring options of any type, be they vesting, team, or player. I also ignored incentives and trade kickers. Finally. I’m using Carlos Correa’s rumored deal with the Mets — 12 years, $315 million — even while it’s not yet official and may be amended.

With that out of the way, I grouped the players into positional groups and compared our predictions to real life. How’d it go? Pretty well, actually, for both sides. Positive numbers here mean we under-estimated, and negative numbers represent an over-estimate:

Read the rest of this entry »